Almost three years ago George cleared the history of the computer. But he forgot that the search bar keeps any sites visited. When I saw the site he visited, I thought it was a mistake. But I text messaged him at work and asked him about it and he admitted to viewing the site.
This was the beginning of the end.
The end of his pornography struggle and the end of my insecurity issues.
About a week after I found out I forgave him and things seemed wonderful. But I was pretending. I didn't even know I was pretending. It was some sort of coping mechanism to deal with things. Just pretend like nothing happened, everything's okay.
Till I asked him a few days later about the rest of his story. How often he looked at porn when we were married, dating, etc.
From there we had good days and bad days. Storms and sunshine, depending on my mood.
George tried. He really tried, from the moment I found out, to put pornography/lust behind him. And honestly, I've never seen a man so successful at doing so in such a short amount of time.
From the time I found out, he has not viewed pornography at all. And because I work with him and we're together 99.8% of the time, I know he's not lying.
He also has higher standards than I do as far as places to go or movies to watch. Other men think he is nuts. He won't touch a graphic design job if it is remotely sensual. Sometimes people think he's a little too intense about it. But he's just serious about protecting his heart from the snare of lust.
If he continued to live life as he did in the past, going to the mall, watching movies with immodest dress and sensuality-driven messages, hanging out on the beach mid-summer, etc. etc. etc., he would not have given God the room to truly change his heart in this area.
He calls these things (like seeing a sexual poster in the mall, or even ads online, and all those things) twigs in the fire. The more twigs you add, the bigger the fire is going to get. The more you keep them out of your fire, the easier it will be to get the fire to stay where it is, where it belongs - calm, centered on Christ, and within the bounds of your marriage.
Men, if you're serious about purity, you might want to think about the twigs you throw into your fire, whether intentionally or not. You can't control ALL of the twigs thrown in, but you can make an effort to keep them away. It is possible. But what I have found is that most men have excuses.
They think one of the following things:
1.) I don't have a problem with that stuff (desensitized)
2.) My wife doesn't care and I don't think it's a big enough deal to do something about it (excuses)
3.) I'm not strong enough (true, so look to God)
4.) What's the point? It's everywhere. (excuses)
5.) You have to live in the world but not be of the world. (excuse)
6.) I can admire a woman's beauty, even if it's sexual, and not lust (lie, excuse, desensitized)
7.) I don't want to be in bondage to obsessing over NOT seeing things (lie, excuse, desensitized)
8.) God's working on me one step at a time, I'll get there one day (maybe, but if you are diligent and obedient, God can purge your issues with lust/porn much quicker)
9.) I don't look at porn, but I'm not going to stop watching TV just because of Victorias Secret commercials, that's ridiculous. (desensitized, excuse)
On and on the list goes. I'm sure some of you can add to the list.
Fact is, until that list is depleted, you will struggle with lust. You may not be looking at porn, but you don't need to look at porn to lust. All you have to do is look twice at that girl in a short skirt, and boom... lust. Or stare at that ad in the sidebar of Facebook. Or keep watching that commercial on TV, or that movie (which is most) that has that pretty girl in inappropriate clothing.
I'm sure tons of men are desensitized to the point where they see this type of thing and don't think about it. They just naturally look twice and go about their day.
But that's not right. Just because you aren't engaging in sexual thoughts about someone, doesn't mean you didn't treat their body as an object of your lust.
A man can appreciate the beauty of a woman, but ONLY if he is not looking at her as an object, a body, a pretty face. That's not appreciating, that's just making the circle of lust/insecurity go round and round some more. The more women feel "appreciated" as an object, the more they feel like they need to be an object to be appreciated.
So anyway, this is a post dedicated to you guys out there who are serious about following Jesus. Stop making excuses and follow Him. Ask Him to take away your lists of reasons why you don't want to cut out your eyeball, and allow him to take a knife to your flesh and dig out your eye.
Trust me, it's better to lose your eye than to spend your life struggling with lust and pornography.
I have seen my husband change so much since he has been free of this stuff. He is so much more free and controlled. HE has the reigns of this lust thing now, instead of lust dragging him around by the neck.
Lust/porn ties topes around you, grabs you by the throat, and tells you how to live your life, making you think you have no choice, no way to break the ropes and get away. Sometimes you don't want the ropes gone. You like them sometimes. Or maybe you don't think of it so much as being enslaved. Maybe you don't think the ropes are a big deal. You've gotten through life so far without having to untie them or cut them off, why not keep things the way they are? It's not like you're looking at anything "too" bad. Those swimsuit ads are NOT like porn, who cares, right?
My husband is free because he laid this thing down before God and begged for mercy and help. He WANTED to change. And that's where it starts.
You have to want this gone. You have to believe it's possible. And then you need get on your knees and ask God to show you how to cut your eye out.
No more groups where we all sit around and talk about how we looked at such-and-such site on Friday while the wife was at work. No more books that describe lustful images in great detail to help you rid these thoughts from your life (that one boggles my mind). No more excuses.
Just plain Jesus.
Jesus, desire, obedience, and a difficult rain to calm the fire.
In my next post I'll talk about women - healing when a husband is/was addicted and ridding lustful thoughts. Yes, women struggle too. It's just different.
6 comments:
wonderful post.
This post has really moved me, Ash and George. The honesty and pursuit of purity is the most shining example of seeking a righteous life.
This is an issue that is very important for Christian men today and an issue that many of us (men) struggle with. I struggled with this in a big way in my early adult years but in time and through sanctification and good (priestly) advice, I have learned that the best way to overcome temptation is as Paul says in 1 Corinthians, to flee (run) from it.
We only fool ourselves when we say, "I am a mature enough Christian to look at/talk to/dance with/____ etc, that it will not tempt me." Nonsense. As soon as the temptation rears its head, turn around and run, shut the computer down and pray, avert your eyes, etc.
____________________
R. E. Aguirre
Regulafide.blogspot.comParadoseis Journal
Bless you Rick!
You are a good brother. Wish you we were closer in proximity.
Christ calls his disciples out of the norm, and in this day in age the norm is saturated with sexuality.
By God's grace and power I rejoice in the freedom He has granted me through obedience to His will. His grace is always there pouring out to us... we need just lift our cups and fill up so to speak.
Indeed, we must run for our the health of our spiritual lives .
Blessed be God forever... He is able to keep us from stumbling.
Yours in Christ,
-g-
P.S. Sweetie this was an excellent post... but you already knew that :)
Ashley, your mention of ads on Facebook reminded me to tell you about a free program we use that makes ads invisible. It's really nice and I often forget just how ad-heavy sites are until I have to use my IE browser (we normally use Firefox). It's called Adblock Plus (google it) and it works great. Sometimes, an ad will slip past their filters, but you can create your own filter really quickly right then and there. Very few have gotten through, though, and most aren't the porn type. And it's free! My hubby tries to keep our computers as clean as possible. He's a techie, so I'm sure it's a good product if he puts it on our own computers.
Kim, that's really interesting! I need to check that out. George doesn't really surf the internet TOO much, but I do have a Facebook and I'd rather not see that stuff either.
Thank you!
We have that same program on our computers. It is worth it! It makes all of the ads disappear.
Thanks for posting about this. In the Christian community this is a HUGELY ignored one.
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